Sarah Croco

This professor has taught: BSGC399, GVPT100, GVPT201, GVPT309C, GVPT409D, GVPT409H, GVPT421, GVPT424, GVPT429A, GVPT700, GVPT722, HGLO101, HGLO208

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Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/02/2024	Annoying class to have to take, but manageable. Croco is fine, not bad or great. I recommend taking STAT100 before GVPT201, that way you are already familiar with R.
Sarah Croco HGLO208 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/17/2024	Professor Croco is a nice person who does know her field and care about her students. However, after three semesters with her it is easy to see some striking flaws in the way she structures courses and teaches. First off, every course she teaches she assigns at least eight different books. Usually only one book is actually used in the course, typically only because you have to write about it. Secondly, all of her courses are loaded up with small to medium sized assignments that annoying to do, easy to forget, and have no relevance to the material. Typically with her classes the R assignments are what actually holds any decent amount of weight on your grade. This turns any of her classes into a race to learn R rather than learning any material. Learning R is also a challenge for anyone regardless of previous experience as you must use packages that require you to learn them rather than the language. Additionally, you will not receive any concrete teaching in R beyond the bear minimum meaning that most of your time within assignments will be spent learning R from someone who knows better or from the internet/AI. Overall it is easy to obtain a good grade, you need to do the work with ok quality, but it is a lot of work.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 08/17/2024	The Professor herself is very nice, she talks with a mask on so sit in front during lectures to hear her. The lectures are also all recorded so technically you don't need to go. This class used R and several different textbooks and books to read from which were not helpful at all. As a gov major, I do not understand why coding needs to be included in everything because I suck at it and did not get any better at using R than when I had to use it for STAT100. My TAs were chill but this class never made sense to me one bit as someone who is not math or science or data-oriented so good luck.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/24/2024	If you have to take this class, good luck. She is a terrible professor who doesn't teach anything. Clearly, she does not care about her students at all.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/24/2024	Literally the worst. Doesn't realize that if everyone is having an issue with something it is her fault not ours.
Sarah Croco Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/12/2024	This class was unbearable. If I could leave no stars I would. The weekly homework and the midterms are genuinely harder than the work I have for CS... and I GO TO LECTURE. She is also friendly in person, but so passive aggressive as a professor. R is also a stupid software no one actually cares about.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/12/2024	Why does this woman have such high reviews?????? She is awful and cannot teach R.
Sarah Croco Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/12/2024	Take. Another. Class. Unless you're in the honors college like me and have no choice. I think I could write a thesis on why I hate this class. For starters, god this woman can talk. She loves to hear herself talk. She is nice and all, but wow, she can really talk! This makes lecture so boring and is the reason I went to maybe three lectures. We use R, which she does not explain how to use. You would think she would go over it in lecture, but nope. She just talks about everything, but how to use R. When you ask her a question about R, she tells you to google it, or she uses ChatGPT in front of you to figure it out. Like hey, maybe don't assign work that you yourself can't do without AI? I did not learn a single useful thing from this class, and the only reason I did well ish was for my friends who had previous R knowledge and the TAs. Do not take this class.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/12/2024	She is a nice person outside of class but that is the only good thing I am saying about her. I took this class because I am in HGLO, let me tell you, worst class I will ever take in my life. If you don't know R, don't expect to do anything well in this class. Majority of our grade is based on coding assignments, but she NEVER goes over coding in lectures, you are expected to teach it to yourself completely. When you ask her or the TAs for help, they completely write you off like you are dumb for not being born with the knowledge to code. Her assignments and rubrics are SO unclear and constantly tell you 2 things that contradict each other. Then, when you email her about it, she doesn't email you back but instead emails THE ENTIRE CLASS telling us that we need to read directions more carefully (despite very unclear instructions.) She is SO passive aggressive and clearly does not care about her students. If I could give her 0 stars I would because this class is STUPID. If this class isn't required for your program/major, save your sanity and don't take it and if you are considering Croco for another class, choose a different professor.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/12/2024	I was required to take this class for my honors college and let me say it did not teach me much. If you are not a government and politics major then I wouldn't recommend taking this class. This stat class is more coding than math focused which was very annoying. If you don't have previous R knowledge then you will struggle A LOT. She does a really bad job of helping with R and you don't learn much about it in class. The only reason I passed with a good grade was by working with other people on the assignments. She is a very kind and sweet person during class but elsewhere she is EXTREMELY passive-aggressive. She is always posting announcements complaining about the questions she's receiving, but the reason for these questions is from how vague and complicated the assignments are explained. Overall the class wasn't horrible since all the work was online (including exams) but I don't think I gained much from this source. If you aren't taking this class with a friend or aren't utilizing a groupme than it will be very difficult.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/06/2024	RAGHHHHHHHHHH First of all, this is a statistics and R class more than it is a government class so just understand what you're signing up for. If you want to learn how to use R and some statistical concepts, go for it. Professor Croco is passionate but this makes her lectures disorganized and overstimulating and some of her assignments unclear. She gets very loud during lectures and bangs the desk which stresses me out and impedes my learning. Her lectures also tend to jump around a bit which can make note taking confusing. Her slides are not very detailed or organized which does not help with note taking or following along with lectures. This makes the urge to skip lectures and not pay attention extremely powerful. No joke. I really did not enjoy the lectures. The assignment requirements are often not very clearly stated in the rubrics but offhandedly mentioned during lectures which can make it difficult if you happen to zone out during her hectic tangents. The assignments themselves (often online quizzes) are poorly made and don't always have clear directions. So completing work for the class is a real headache. There is a lot of reading, not all of it helpful, interesting, or easy to understand. She does record all of her lectures, which is a big plus.
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/03/2024	Professor Croco is incredibly kind, easygoing, and funny. There is not a professor that is better than her at being personable and helpful. On the other hand, the class is slightly boring. The books are boring and get worse as the semester goes on. You will hate R at some point just because. I promise. However, to resolve any R issues, just ask her or either of the TAs because they are always there to help.
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/15/2023	Dr. Croco is a great person and she is so sweet outside of class, so this review is not against her as a person, just her teaching style. First of all, the books we read and the reflections we had to do with them were very easy, that was never an issue. Sometimes she would assign like 200 pages of reading a week, which was annoying but that was so easy compared to the coding. If you have never coded before, this class is going to be very difficult for you. Dr. Croco is very bad at teaching R. She doesn't give any support and expects us to know a lot right from the beginning. The pace we move at is so unbearable, and often Dr. Croco doesn't even know stuff. She tells us to use ChatGPT and google a lot, but those offer such immense resources that it is difficult to even know what to Google. The coding assignments are due on Wednesday which makes it very difficult to keep up with. Overall, find people in the class who have coding experience and work together with them because it will be so difficult if not.
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/15/2023	Dr. Croco is a really nice and understanding professor who really cares for her students. She is very engaging and friendly and it is very obvious that she actually loves what she does. Regarding the class, the work load wasn't hard when it came to the reflections and readings. The books were not that bad although some were very boring reads. My BIGGEST complaint about this class was learning R and the coding assignments for it. When I tell you they are bad, THEY ARE BAD. If you are not into tech, it will be a huge struggle. Dr. Croco was great at teaching everything BUT R. She didn't know how to explain the work and when you asked her for help, she would tell you to either collaborate with others are look it up online (which didn't help because R code you would find online is too advanced for this class). I feel if a professor is recommending you to use Chat GPT then something is wrong with how the class is being taught. I would say this class overall is 3/4 stars just because of how bad the R assignments were.
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/11/2023	I had Dr. Croco during my first semester of college (Fall 2022). It also was the first semester this class was taught. She was an excellent professor. This class' content was easy, and it was graded fairly. All around good and easy class.
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/12/2023	I did not like Dr. Croco at first, but she has grown on me this past year. HGLO101 forces you to learn how to code with R, and Dr. Croco does not give much instruction on what to do. She posts some video walkthroughs and assigns readings but there are not really any lectures devoted to learning R. But, as a member of HGC, I was prepared for GVPT201 since I learned R from HGLO101. Dr. Croco really cares about her students and is very willing to help.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/10/2023	overall: so this class was definitely difficult at first, but after some time you start to get used to it. you learn how to use r-studio which isn't easy but as long as you go to discussion and use the textbook you'll be fine. the midterm was a lot of material, but the project she has you do at the end really boosts your grade and is pretty easy. the final was a bit easier than the midterm and there was a big curve at the end. she also gave my class extra credit opportunities. her lectures are pretty interesting and I would definitely recommend going in person instead of watching her online. discussion sections are boring but do go because they take attendance and my TA would work through our homework problems to give us answers which helped my grade a lot recommendations/heads up go to discussion, go to lectures in person, give yourself time to do the homework assignments (your TA will be your best friend for the homework assignments), take time to study the midterm and you'll be good
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A+ BumbleBee 04/26/2023	If you like coding in R and reading PoliSci books then this class is for you. If not this is a great class to do HW in. Dr. Croco uses her time to repeat verbatim things you read that week. Each week you must write a reflection and create a meme, both of which are easy. If Dan is your TA you will be in luck, an amazing guy who is super helpful on all R assignments. The code can be hard to get the hang of and made me want to drop Honors but once you get over the learning curve you'll realize that Dr. Croco is right about all the benefits of knowing R. Dr. Croco does try to incorporate student input and make her classes more engaging. This was the first year so I'm sure it will only get better. Attendance is not required and there are no tests. The final project is also very easy.
Sarah Croco GVPT309C Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/18/2023	im not sure if this class is coming back but it was realllllly really cool to have guest lecturers. the workload was so little so we could focus more on enjoying the content.
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/19/2023	If you are in Global Communities read this review carefully. Shes the only teacher who teaches this course. We were the first class to ever have her and take this course and thought it felt disorganized at times, it was a great class. Dr Croco is incredibly kind and passionate about what she does and comes to dorchester events to meet the students. She is the best. People really just hated on her because the course had coding assignments (which are so easy...and I HATE computer science). The class is literally so easy. We have a weekly reading that you have to write a 250 word reflection, a meme assignment, and a mini coding assignment (which is again...so easy). Love Dr Croco. There is no exams for this class nor is there a final.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/09/2023	This class is mostly about stats and that jazz and basically serves as an intro to political research. It's boring, but she tries her best to make it interesting. R is used in this class like a calculator and you have coding assignments every week. Go to discussion for participation points. Other than that, the exams scores weren't the greatest and even though she said that she wouldn't give extra credit, she had like two extra credit opportunities.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/22/2022	When I initially signed up for this course, all I had heard was how much of a nightmare it could be. However, Dr. Croco was AMAZING. Her lectures are great and I highly recommend listening to them a few times to comprehend the material. The coding seems intimidating at first, but as long as you attend discussion and read the workbook, you will be fine. Also, do not be afraid to reach out to Dr. Croco, she is always happy to answer questions and will respond very quickly. If you are interested in political science research, then take this class!!!
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A edenw29 12/17/2022	I really liked professor croco. Her lectures can be kinda boring but she makes it as engaging and fun as possible. Honestly, her assignments are super cool if you let them be. The final memo was super fun to do, which I know sounds crazy to say about a 4 page regression analysis. GVPT201 has a bad reputation but croco will make sure you are taken care of
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/13/2022	I agree with the other reviews - avoid this class at all costs, but if you MUST take it, then you want this professor. She records each lecture and uploads them so attendance is not necessary. I did not go to class and it made our two exams very difficult, but I would rather cram the week of if it meant my weekly schedule was lighter. They are online and the second is worth much more points. The HW consists of a coding assignment each week due Wed night at 11:59 (based on accuracy). Our class did so bad as a whole, she curved the final 19 points- the mean was a 71, so basically a D. She is generous when she needs to be and is very good at addressing issues, answering questions, and being clear about what is to be expected. TA's go over homework code in sections so attendance for those are required and HELPFUL. She seems intimidating on day one, don't let that scare you off. It is not her fault this class sucks, she even said she is required to teach some things even if she doesn't think we will ever use it.
Sarah Croco HGLO101 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/01/2022	First thing: this course has a lot of reading, but you are reading actual books rather than textbooks, so it's not that bad. Also a lot of coding in R - this course is basically an introduction to using data science for politics/government. She does not teach the coding in class, but she does record tutorials and its especially not that bad if you know how to use Google. Coding assignments were once a week making a graph from a dataset. Aside from coding assignments, all other work was very easy, just a paragraph reflection and meme based on the readings for that week. Lectures were fun and she is very entertaining, definitely recommend especially if you're interested in data, but even if you're not.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/05/2022	While she is a nice teacher, she barely discussed coding which is a vital CRUCIAL part of this course. I'm not sure why she didn't discuss coding more. However, if you asked her about it outside of class she was helpful. Be aware, however, that this class is very boring and requires persistence to get an A especially if you have no coding experience like I did.
Sarah Croco GVPT309C Expecting an A Anonymous 03/25/2021	I love Professor Croco. She's so entertaining, and can make any difficult topic much more fun. Super reasonable and predictable work load in my opinion, and no midterm or final exam for this class!
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/24/2020	This class is not fun but Professor Croco is so entertaining. It's essentially a statistics and coding class. Not sure why it's labeled a gov class. Glad I'm done with it.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting a B- Anonymous 06/13/2020	Words cannot express how much this course ruined my semester. BUT Croco is awesome and keeps the lectures very entertaining. She is a great prof, but your TA's run the show. They're the ones grading your assignments and teaching you the detailed stuff. Exams are no joke.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/18/2019	Dr. Croco helped enliven an otherwise (kinda) boring stats class. It was a requirement for me (GVPT major). I had never taken a stats nor programming course before, so I knew it was going to be interesting. There are several (~11) coding HW assignments throughout the semester, but the coding wkbk kind of gives you the code to rework. Yes, it’s time-consuming, but it’s a lot easier once you get into a habit. Make sure to read the chapter in the textbook before lecture, otherwise you’ll fall behind quickly. I also found it easy to schedule office hrs with my TA to discuss some minor coding stuff, and stop by Dr. Croco’s during open office hrs to ask questions.
Sarah Croco GVPT201 Anonymous 05/01/2019	A loud and fun personality in the classroom. GVPT 201 is a dreadful course but if you need to take it, she's the professor you want.
Sarah Croco Anonymous 11/19/2014	Professor Croco is very nice and is a pretty good professor but the class is downright awful. There are ridiculous amount of incredibly tedious homework, all of which are graded. The first exam was really easy, the final exam ended up being curved 15 points because alot of people failed it. The paper was alot work, but was not graded too harshly. Try to get Zack as your TA. Avoid this class like the plague if you are not GOV major.
Sarah Croco GVPT100 w_l 11/19/2013	I learned a lot in this class... but it was an awful experience. Despite being a 100 level class, it is very difficult. Much harder than it needs to be. The homework assignments are VERY time consuming and extremely difficult. However, you must do well on them if you want a good grade. The exams are not bad. Make sure you understand things conceptually and you will do fine on them. Definitely do not recommend this class unless you need to take it.
Sarah Croco GVPT100 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2013	Professor Croco is a good professor. GVPT100 is a terrible class. Croco goes over the essential concepts in lecture multiple times, so it's easy to figure out what's important and what will be on the exams. She also encourages students to ask questions in lecture, which was really helpful. She speaks very fast and only focussed on one of the two projector screens in a fairly large room, so that was annoying. Overall though, I thought she was good and I actually learned from her. Do not take GVPT100 if you are not a gov major. And if you are, then make sure you do every hw assignment and get a good grade on it, even if you don't understand it. This is basically a gov stat class, so be prepared for that. Also, ask a lot of questions because everything builds on what you learned previously.
Sarah Croco agebhart 11/07/2008	This class is probably one of the best I've taken at UMD. There is a large amount of reading every class (usually 30+ pages), but the reading guides Prof. Croco puts online are helpful for getting through them. The readings themselves are very interesting and cover a lot of international security topics, and we spend a good amount of time in class discussing the material. Definitely a class for people looking to learn a bit more about the research component of political science, and for getting into heated debates about a variety of issues.